Not just any old asshole can cultivate bananas. You have to have a knack for it. For those mellow yellows can be plentiful but volatile. A fruitful harvest requires an ever vigilant eye on ripeness, maturity and color. Picking too early in the green zone will result in nothing less than hard fibrous blandness. Too much hang time on the branch and it's all brown spotted mush. To make matters more complicated some verities produce fruit that is green when ripe or that will fully ripen after being picked from the plant. Becoming familiar with the subtleties of your favored variety is crucial. Knowing the optimal time to pick and the right time to peel is more than a science, it's an art.
Dennis Callaci is a salty dog musician and songwriter who knows how to spread out a harvest. Whenever Dennis is not working on his own music he's propagating the sounds of other like-minded brethren through his decades old Shrimper label. In a lot of ways Dennis has won the game, defied the odds, for he is an expert at tiptoeing around the confides of conventional rewards. His expectations are exceedingly low while his motivations are heavily fortified by a satisfied-self. This delicate combo of total togetherness deems him exempt from virtually all terms of failure. Dennis' latest focal point is the New Secrets album, a collaboration with longtime friend Simon Joyner. The album is a glorious statement of ripe personality and well persevered independence that is sure to withstand many seasons to come. So folks, don't believe the conspiracy of hollow expectations and long live the bananadine fantasy.
- Do you feel your music is a reflection of true self or an extension of a fictional entity you wish to be?
I am incredibly curious about the methods and thoughts of musicians, writers, & artists that I respect or have a deep love of their music, have read far too many auto/biographies on them when I should have been attacking other things (oh Mishima, you are incorrigible), but have seldom, over the course of the 25 yrs or so of releasing music, given much thought to the process of my own songwriting & have generally dodged most interviews as to
escape being self-serving, solipsistic or just tedious. So apologies to the LED screens, abused eye gates and work lost to reading this for any that enter.
escape being self-serving, solipsistic or just tedious. So apologies to the LED screens, abused eye gates and work lost to reading this for any that enter.
In regard to the question above, even in the most abstract and removed of songs, I do not see any logical way that what is created is not a reflection of who you are. I destroyed some perfectly good vegetables, turmeric, coriander and olive oil trying to make a nice meal last night. Tea leaves read mediocre, folks around my table were kind but there eyes read "nice try". I look at a neighbor of mine that lived in Germany during the early 40's, a bullet braised her hair, just a kiss from the side of her head, she made it out alive and with an incredible outlook on top. She made something out of darkness. There is nothing in any of my songs that touches that. The reflection of the true self is what you do in your home & on the streets to your friends & enemies. Everyone is an artist, just as everyone is an asshole. I would take the truth any which way I can get it, even when it is painful & messy.
- Can you approximate how many songs you're written in your life thus far?
- Can you approximate how many songs you're written in your life thus far?
So many terrible little songs, the number is a wealth but the quality is dogged. My brother Allen & I wrote a couple of thousand songs in our band that was the precursor to Refrigerator. 20 or so songs a week at times. Was fantastic practice considering that maybe 15 of these songs hold any water today. Over the last decade, I have written much fewer, maybe 200 decent songs, but if you are familiar with any of my songs, then you know
how economical and simple the music is.
how economical and simple the music is.
- What qualifies as an accomplished song? Is there a certain song that you
are particularly proud of? Why?
are particularly proud of? Why?
The only signifier I have as to a song being accomplished is when I share it with either Refrigerator, or in the case of the record that just got released, with Simon Joyner & his band. If a song feels like a sketch that can go somewhere I will share it, but if it feels half cooked or uninspired, it will die on a hard drive or a cassette or a CDR. I spend a lot of time on the initial written lyric and then sometime find a song that it fits into, sometimes not. This is not to say that the music isn't important, but it is easier for me to come by. The writing of the lyrics has always been much more important to me than the music. More usual than not, the lyrics will already exist before any thought as to the music. On the "New Secrets" record, the song "Guitar as Guitar" is made of 2 short verses that were written prior to the music, the last stretch is mainly stream of consciousness that I put together in the first run through of the song w/ the band, and this verse changed quite a bit on the second and final take. The first verse of the song is sparked from a vague idea of a band breaking up mid song in some high rent studio. Second verse is about a relationship sailing south, and the third verse is an abstraction of a miscarriage suffered by my wife (and I) about 10 yrs ago, but this last part was not apparent to me as the song came together & I was singing these words. I was reading Jonathan Lethem's treatise of John Carpenter's "They Live" in between songs the day that we recorded this song and started to think about how cartoony the aliens are in the film "They Live", but what a succinct and boiled down definition these creatures are if you were to cop a quick sketch from a misanthrope. Monsters, ghosts, tragic figures. So when I sang the last verse, that was what was in my mind's eye anyway. It wasn't until long after the song was recorded that the lyrics revealed to me that they were dressed up all Halloween, but were rooted in this incredibly personal experience of me taking the remnants of a failed pregnancy into the Pomona Valley Hospital, at the urging of my wife who was also a bit crazed at the time, to see if any tests could be run or anything of that nature to help in the event of our next pregnancy. It wasn't until I listened to a test press of the record that this occurred to me. I do not approach what I do as a confessional or as a place to air grievances or sorrows, but that does not mean that you can divorce yourself, or at least I can't, from your life bleeding into your songs. More often than not, the songs that I write are more of a forecast into the future than a regurgitation of the past. Listen to "Guitar as Guitar" HERE.
- What are the pros and cons of working alone or as a collaborator?
Collaborating, for me, is not only the point of making music, but one of the few truly satisfying actions you can take & run with and find wealth at its finish line. I have worked with hundreds of artists over the last 25 years running Shrimper, and am humbled by the innumerable times I have been in the midst of watching minor ideas turn into major pieces. The seed of demos that I hear of a record, like the forthcoming John Davis record, that morph into something altogether different & richer upon completion, it is one of the only real reasons I still run the label. The record that I recorded years ago w/ John Davis is very similar to the ones that I recorded w/ Simon or Refrigerator. There is not a lot of talk about direction or method. The recording of nearly all of the records I have been involved in have some kind of seat of the pants booby trap fixed into them, improvisational as can be allowed, affairs. I live for the surprise and mistakes and truths that come out of playing, that high that comes when you are in mid stream and lost in the ether. I seldom attain that when I record on my own, which is why I haven't released much solo stuff in the last 20 years. Easiest form to liken the difference to masturbation versus sex. You look soooooo stupid doing either one.
- Who is or would be your ultimate songwriting mentor (dead or living)?
- What are the pros and cons of working alone or as a collaborator?
Collaborating, for me, is not only the point of making music, but one of the few truly satisfying actions you can take & run with and find wealth at its finish line. I have worked with hundreds of artists over the last 25 years running Shrimper, and am humbled by the innumerable times I have been in the midst of watching minor ideas turn into major pieces. The seed of demos that I hear of a record, like the forthcoming John Davis record, that morph into something altogether different & richer upon completion, it is one of the only real reasons I still run the label. The record that I recorded years ago w/ John Davis is very similar to the ones that I recorded w/ Simon or Refrigerator. There is not a lot of talk about direction or method. The recording of nearly all of the records I have been involved in have some kind of seat of the pants booby trap fixed into them, improvisational as can be allowed, affairs. I live for the surprise and mistakes and truths that come out of playing, that high that comes when you are in mid stream and lost in the ether. I seldom attain that when I record on my own, which is why I haven't released much solo stuff in the last 20 years. Easiest form to liken the difference to masturbation versus sex. You look soooooo stupid doing either one.
- Who is or would be your ultimate songwriting mentor (dead or living)?
This question is difficult on so many fronts. Over the years I have fallen in love with nearly every record that I have been able to put out on Shrimper, and what usually draws me in is the quality of the songs. As time stretches, this does not change. Meaning that my peers, the songwriters that I grew up with in my early 20's (Franklin Bruno, Joel Huschle, Mark Givens, John Darnielle, my brother) affect me in the same way that younger artists whose records I have put out of late (John Thill, The Babies, Adam Lipman, Donovan Quinn, Woods) do. I hear music by them and see possibilities that I did not see previously. Songwriters that I don't know, that move me, there is a plethora from all walks. One incredibly underrated one is Brian Piltin, from Brooklyn, he had a self released CD as "The Piltones" out a few years back. The whole package, great songs, great lyrics, inventive.
- Care to divulge one of your secret sources of inspiration for song construction?
- Care to divulge one of your secret sources of inspiration for song construction?
Reversing words/phrases to lyrics, pulling a word out of line 3 & plugging it into line 4, then playing with what is there gets my mind off the tether when I am stuck. I remind myself that some of my favorite lyrics are the ones that are abstract in an absurd way, but a way that rings true. Mickey Newbury or Alex Chilton have a lot of weedy lines that dig right into my sternum.
